Former Worcester County Sheriff Guy W. Glodis testified Tuesday in the state ethics case against him that he couldn’t remember speaking with Commerce Bank and Trust Chairman David G. “Duddie” Massad two years ago about getting an inmate out of jail on work release.

Candies Pruitt-Doncaster, a lawyer for the state Ethics Commission’s Enforcement Division, sought to refresh the former sheriff’s memory by showing him a log of his cellphone calls that she had subpoenaed.

The log showed that on the morning of Oct. 28, 2009, the day before a friend of Mr. Massad’s was due to report to the Worcester County Jail and House of Correction to serve a four-month sentence for larceny, the sheriff called his wealthy friend and campaign donor, Mr. Massad, and spoke to him for nine minutes.

A few minutes later, Mr. Glodis called the main administrative offices of the jail in West Boylston. Later that afternoon, the sheriff took another call from Mr. Massad, spoke briefly and then immediately called the jail main office again, according to the phone records.

“I do not remember specifically any contact with Duddie Massad about Joe Duggan,” Mr. Glodis said on the witness stand.

Mr. Massad testified Monday that he had called the sheriff that day to see if Joseph T. Duggan III of Shrewsbury could be placed on work release to allow him to continue construction work for Mr. Massad on a car dealership in Auburn. Mr. Duggan was let out of jail to work for Mr. Massad the next day, despite a written policy barring inmates with open cases, as Mr. Duggan had, from going on work release.

The Enforcement Division filed an order in June alleging that Mr. Glodis, now a lobbyist, violated two sections of the state conflict of interest law when he was sheriff by allegedly arranging for the placement as a favor to Mr. Massad. Mr. Glodis could be fined up to $10,000 if he is found to have violated the statute.

In his testimony Tuesday, Mr. Glodis said he never involved himself in the placement of any inmates, including Mr. Duggan. In fact, he said, he had no role whatsoever in running the jail despite being sheriff.

“My role was more of a community relations role,” he said, noting that he spent his time visiting senior centers, arranging community cookouts, organizing food drives and other such activities intended to raise and improve the public profile of the sheriff’s office.

Mr. Glodis said he had not approved the written policy against releasing inmates who have pending cases, although he signed it.

“I signed this, but I did not write it. I did not read it,” Mr. Glodis said, noting that all policies were reviewed and approved by his longtime friend and second-in-command, Jeffrey R. Turco, who also testified yesterday.

Mr. Glodis said he did not instruct Mr. Turco or anyone else to release Mr. Duggan.“Absolutely, unequivocally not,” the former sheriff said.

A former home improvement contractor, Mr. Duggan was stripped of his construction supervisor licenses by state regulators for repeated misconduct. Mr. Duggan also was the subject of a series of stories in the Telegram & Gazette three years ago detailing complaints from customers that he pocketed money intended for building supplies and then walked away from projects and left them unfinished.

He was sentenced to four months in the Worcester County Jail for a larceny conviction in one of those cases. Mr. Duggan previously has served more than four years in federal prison for bank fraud and money laundering.

Mr. Glodis’ lawyer, Thomas R. Kiley, called several other witnesses who work in the jail, including Assistant Deputy Superintendent Thomas Chappel and Donald Sergie, an employee tasked with identifying inmates who could be released on electronic bracelet monitoring to ease crowding in the jail.

Under questioning from Mr. Kiley, the witnesses said crowding and the need to keep the inmate count below levels set by a federal judge in a consent decree influenced almost every decision they made, including creating pressure to put more inmates on work release or electronic monitoring.

Mr. Sergie said somebody told him to consider Mr. Duggan for release within hours of his arrival at the jail, but he could not remember who.

Mr. Chappel, who approved Mr. Duggan’s release for work, said he did not consider the inmate’s two open cases in Westboro District Court as the kind of open cases that would bar him from the program because a judge had released Mr. Duggan on personal recognizance pending trial. However, he did consider them open cases in evaluating the prisoner for release on an electronic monitor bracelet, according to records.

When Ms. Pruitt-Doncaster pointed out the seeming inconsistency, Mr. Chappel said, “Yeah, I don’t understand what my process was there.”

But the assistant deputy superintendent was emphatic in stating that Mr. Glodis had not instructed him to put Mr. Duggan on work release.

“Never has any sheriff or anybody in the administration forced me to make a recommendation I wasn’t comfortable with,” he said.